Public Health

Ben Spencer Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whitford]

I have given way a lot, and lots of other hon. Members are waiting to speak.

As for the Leader of the House’s nonsensical claim that people cannot catch covid from their friends, I have to say that words fail me—and as Members can well believe, that is not a common occurrence. It is clear that the most common spread is within households. If the Leader of the House thinks that husbands, wives and children are not friendly with one another, I really worry about his home circumstances.

It is early days, but we should be following a precautionary approach. As Dr Ryan of the World Health Organisation has always said: go early and go hard. In the last three waves, the Government often delayed making decisions until the problem was proven. I welcome the changes that they are making to try to get ahead of the curve this time, but as well as taking action on masks, they should advise those who can easily work from home to do so. They should promote “hands, face, space” again, to push it to people who may have got a little complacent.

The Government should also look at how to support the installation and improvement of ventilation. Covid is airborne. Hon. Members will remember how smoke used to hang in a pub before the smoking ban. Any Member who has ever worked in pubs, as I did as a student, will know that smoke would still be hanging there the next morning. That is the issue with poorly ventilated spaces, as we have seen from the outbreaks associated with Committee Rooms in the House.

The arrival of such a variant was inevitable. Last spring, we heard warm words about a global response to a global crisis, but while more than 85% of adults in the UK have been double-vaccinated, the figure is less than 4% in low-income countries, including many that have not been able to vaccinate their healthcare workers.

[Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)]

Does the evolution of an immune escape variant, which omicron may be, occur because of a vaccinated immune population or because of a naive population?

[Dr Whitford]

I think that its emergence in southern Africa would suggest that it is from a naive population. One of the issues with our complacency here and reliance on vaccination while allowing very high case numbers is that through Darwinism it can pre-select for vaccine-resistant variants and mutations. Those are the ones that will get a grip; the ones that are vaccine-susceptible will not, because we are so vaccinated.

Allowing high spread, which means common mutations, is a problem wherever it happens, but in the naive populations in the global south there is a real danger. They do not have testing, they do not have the materials, they do not have genomics and they do not have vaccines, so the danger is that they will therefore get a variant that builds up and eventually comes to Europe and to the UK. Sending occasional batches that are almost out of date, as was reported recently to us in the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus, does not allow Governments in the global south to prepare and use vaccines within date.

The UK is still among the countries blocking a TRIPS waiver. We must realise that it is not a matter of just sharing some leftover doses. We need to massively increase global population, which means sharing intellectual property and sharing technological expertise. If anything, this variant should be a reminder that no one is safe until everyone is safe.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow such a powerful speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker).

Today’s debate is fundamentally about uncertainty—uncertainty about omicron. It looks spooky, and it seems to be out-performing other variants in Africa. Why? Who knows. We do not know whether it is going to be more harmful or less harmful; we just do not know.

The problem with these restrictions is also uncertainty. Their direct effect is certainly not trivial. They are going to batter the international travel sector, which has already taken an absolute battering over the past two years. They will yet again have a disproportionate impact on children, when we see the collapse of bubbles in schools because of omicron and our children having to wear face masks at disproportionately high rates compared to adults; yet again, children are going to be the most affected. Sadly, that has been the story of the pandemic thus far.

The real harm from these restrictions is the, “Here we go again.” That is how I felt when the 5 pm press conference on a Saturday was announced again. In the click of a finger, I was back to 2020. I think that everyone at home watching was starting to worry and think, “What is going to come next? Here we go—is this the start of the ratchet again, moving monotonously and inexorably towards higher and increasing restrictions?”. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) was exactly right when he said that it is this chilling effect that does, and is doing, the most harm.

Immediately, I started thinking, “Shall we hold off on ordering the booze for my 40th birthday party in a couple of weeks? Shall we just wait and see what happens?”. There are stories of countless events that we already anticipate will be cancelled, thinking, “Let’s hold off on making clear arrangements about seeing our parents at Christmas” and “Let’s just hold off on ordering the goose or the turkey”. All this has a snowballing impact.

I remember, as I think many people do, when it was just three weeks to flatten the curve. Heaven forbid that because of this chilling effect, people at home say to themselves, “You know what, actually? That lump I found? Let’s not bother the GPs. They’re too busy—too much to deal with, with covid.”. That is a serious and severe concern.

There is a final uncertainty that gives me the most trouble: how much we will really know in three weeks’ time. We know that it takes three weeks to get from infection to hospitalisation and three weeks from hospitalisation to get to death. We have only just started finding our domestic omicron cases. Will we really know from our domestic data in three weeks’ time what on earth omicron looks like: what it is doing, how transmissible it is, and the impact it is having on our NHS? Can we really compare international data with ours? We have had a phenomenal vaccine roll-out. We celebrate the impact of our vaccine roll-out and the booster: it is far better than many other nations’. Are we really comparable in those terms, whatever data ends up coming out across the world? I am really uncertain that we will know in three weeks’ time what is going to happen and what our next steps, if anything, should be.

In the face of the uncertainty that all of us are feeling, where can we find confidence? I would argue: here. Here is where the public find confidence, because they see us standing here debating and scrutinising, raising their points and concerns, chewing over in the most minute detail the SIs that are coming forward, and challenging the Minister on why we are doing what we are doing—having a great debate across the House on these issues. They see this and they have confidence that whatever we do in going forward, and whatever impact we are having on people’s day-to-day lives, we have scrutinised it—that we are here representing them and making sure that we make the best possible decisions.

We have some big decisions to take in three weeks and I do worry about what is going to happen then. Will the data from omicron be bad, will it be good, or will it be “not sure”? Parliament must be able to debate this, being recalled if necessary or, better yet, not going into recess until we have the data so that we know what our next steps should or should not be. For me, in terms of ending uncertainty, I would be grateful if the Minister gave certainty that Parliament will have its say whatever happens in two or three weeks’ time in terms of our response to the omicron variant or wider variants that may pop up between now and then.